


through a land so wide and savage

by tomatocages (kittu9)



Category: The Middleman (TV)
Genre: Baffin Bay, Canon Character of Color, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Girl Saves Boy, Monsters, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:16:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittu9/pseuds/tomatocages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Why do we always have to fight the gross monsters?</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	through a land so wide and savage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [torigates](https://archiveofourown.org/users/torigates/gifts).



“It’s like a business trip. A convention. For research. For temps,” she’d told Lacey while packing a reusable shopping bag with smoked almonds, instant coffee, and a change of underwear. “It’s for the job. I’ll be back in a few weeks. Hopefully with a raise.”

The job being what it is, Wendy’s not really surprised when the alien that only _looks_ like an enormous, chitinous narwhale rears up out of Baffin Bay (“It’s actually called _Saknirutiak Imanga_ , Dubbie, we must remember to be culturally sensitive,”) and swallows her Boss whole, terrible jacket and all. She’s not surprised, and she doesn’t panic—not really her bag—but she’s a little apprehensive of what she might have to do to get him back, and what kind of decontamination procedure she’ll have to follow once she _does_ retrieve him. They’re far north, it’s fucking freezing, and there’s no way either of them are going to avoid getting soaked (She doesn’t care what he did before he became the Middleman—in Wendy’s book, you get swallowed by a whale, you get wet). 

She wonders if this is what Ida’s orientation packet would refer to as “the great peril of existence,” before taking a running leap into the beak-like, one-toothed maw of the chitinous narwhale-look-alike and sliding belly-down on its hideous tongue, headed down its throat and to her boss.

 

_Much, much later:_

“Repentant Ninevah, Dubbie! You demonstrated tremendous grace on this mission. I’m proud to have you in the Middle-Organization.”

“Is that your way of saying you won’t pay for a new uniform?”

“What, spend all your last paycheck on a head of broccoli?”

Wendy smiles thinly and sets her frostburned fingers on her slime-stained hips, about to give as good as she’s ever gotten, but the boss sighs fretfully and she focuses on his square jaw instead of Ida’s grim maw, which honestly has a lot in common with the last monster Wendy clocked. 

“Overtime at least,” she says. “I gotta pay rent, Pip’s been darkening my door like a spotty solar eclipse.”

At the mention of the plagiarist son of her building owner, Boss sighs again, and Wendy, overcome with fondness, drops her aggressive stance and leans forward, bumps her forehead hard against his chest. His uniform is less filthy than hers, but only a little.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he tells her. He’s already brought one arm up and around her shoulders, steadying her; he’s warm, even after slogging several miles across a glacier and through several miles more of snow. Wendy doesn’t think of herself as delicate, but she’d rather photosynthesize than freeze her ass off, and she’s not dead besides. She slips her own arm around his waist and grabs a disgusting handful of his jacket.

“Why do we always have to fight the gross monsters,” she grumbles. It is not a complaint. 

“Dubbie.”

“Glad you didn’t die,” she says, breezily avoiding eye contact. Boss doesn’t say a word, but his posture loses some of its starch, and in response he slumps against her, settling in for the rest of a long night of watching Ida fill out incident reports and fact-check their real-time footage. 

She’s glad to take the weight.

**Author's Note:**

> "The great peril of our existence lies in the fact that our diet consists entirely of souls” -- Inuit saying.
> 
> "broccoli" is, according to the internet, slang for--you guessed it--marijuana.


End file.
